“What are words for? When no one listens, what are words for?” So hiccupped Dale Bozzio in 1980 as I stood watching her and my friend Terry Bozzio in their rehearsal studio on Robertson Boulevard in Beverly Hills. They had just formed a band named Missing Persons and Terry invited me to produce their first studio recordings.

Decades before Gaga and years before Madonna, Dale Bozzio was onstage wearing clear plastic “C-cups” with outré costumes and hair. Her taut, tight little body was the lure but the meat in the music was the virtuoso drumming and guitar playing backing thoughtful lyrics carved by drummer-husband Terry.

So you just spent four hundred bucks on a new iPhone. Sounds hard to swallow if all it that you got was a cell phone. But if you look at it as a multi-purpose point-and-shoot digital camera, video camera, videophone, music and video player, web browser and paperweight, it’s not a bad deal. Further, if you consider the potential of the 500,000 apps available at the App Store, you have a personal trainer, medical advisor and life coach as well as a spiritual mentor.

There is no dearth of high-priced medical and health apps surrounding the field of conventional medicine. And the same holds true in the field of holistic lifestyles and health and here is a list…

I enjoyed working with many Japanese groups during my tenure as a recording engineer and producer. Then and on trips to Japan, I made several friends and business acquaintances. We relied on each other heavily for contacts, sources and ideas, East-to-West and vice versa.

In the early 1980s, one friend solicited my help. Japanese industry was easily on a par with America’s then. In technology and engineering, Japan was seen as superior. Sony, Toyota, Pioneer and other companies owned American consumer interest.

There was one area where Japan continued to lag, my friend told me. Despite all the intellectual and empirical horsepower they could muster, Japan still envied the creative genius of companies like Disney and other…

Time for another installment of "News You Can Use," highlights of news around the world that points out how we might want to consider alternatives to the way we’re doing things, especially in areas affecting our health.

Another Top Forty “Hit” for American Medicine - American medicine was able to crack the Top Forty statistically in August. Details emerged that infant survival rates for our high-tech, high-cost method of delivering babies has plunged us to a worldwide ranking of #40. That’s right. We're on a par with Qatar. Want to know where you should live if you want to have a better chance of your infant surviving childbirth? You could move to Slovenia. Or you could move to Lithuania,…

The fictional super-sleuth Sherlock Holmes was known to chide his simplistic sidekick, Dr. Watson. When explaining obvious steps in his line of deduction Holmes uttered that it was, “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

It would seem fitting that we paraphrase Mr. Holmes when it comes to the obvious: The market for nutritional supplements, vitamins and minerals, health food products and items sometimes folderol, has exploded in the past decade, becoming far more than elementary.

Fifteen years ago it would have been tough to find the selection of herbal supplements and vitamin derivatives now common in great numbers at the typical Walgreen’s and in even greater numbers at a Whole Foods or No Name Nutrition. How do we wade…

The audacity! Johnson & Johnson, one of the largest drug companies in the world, has launched a television ad that touts the “healing power of touch” then goes on to shill their latest Tylenol product. Talk about bait and switch!

The ad draws the viewer’s attention by using the appeal of a natural, safe and effective way to relieve pain that has been known for millennia: human touch. But within a few seconds, we realize touch has nothing to do with what the new Tylenol product is about. They’re trying to sell you a cream containing methyl salicylate, C12-15 alkyl benzoate, carbomer, cocoglycerides, distearyl ether, edetate disodium, ethylparaben, fragrance, glyceryl laurate, glyceryl stearate, methylparaben, myristlyl alcohol, phenoxyethanol, propylparaben,…

Legend has it that around 2,500 years ago, along the banks of the river Tiber, on the lower slopes of mythical Mt. Sapo, handmaidens would wash clothes. Upstream was a temple, the site of ritual animal sacrifice. On days following rain, maidens noticed the river water produced whitish clumps. When fabrics were rubbed with the clumps, the whites were whiter and the colors were brighter. Legend continues that upstream, rainwater mixed with ashes and melted fats from the sacrificed animals, forming a natural soap. The maidens were the unwitting beneficiaries.

Lye, fat and water give five parts soap, one part glycerin. Glycerin is a natural emollient and an important part of soap. In modern commercial soap making processes,…